Posts Tagged ‘Death Valley’

2014 The Year In Review

The Year 2014 was one of my most prolific since I started photographing 39 years ago when my father, American wilderness photographer Philip Hyde, gave me a Pentax K1000… Many people don’t realize that I have two of my own portfolios of images on Philip Hyde.com at the bottom of the dropdown menu after 26 portfolios of drum and flatbed scans of Dad’s classic color transparencies, as well as black and white prints, originally captured on medium and large format film. For a brief background on my travel and adventures in childhood and after read, “About David Leland Hyde.” A big thank you to Jim M. Goldstein for founding and again hosting this showcase every year since 2007. See details for participation and enjoyment, “Blog Project: Your Best Photos From 2014.”

All “lucky 21” of my top photograph picks this year were single image capture, though I do blend images to capture highlight and shadow detail when necessary. However, this year I have used no blends so far, no HDR, only a few masks, did not move or remove objects, except for detailed retouching and otherwise optimized the photographs only with curves and a few other minor layer adjustments. This is essentially how the classic straight photographers printed in the darkroom, but in the digital workflow I make editing adjustments with much more precision than possible with any film process.

This year I kept 21,154 images as opposed to only 8,142 in 2013; 10,525 saved in 2012; 5,783 in 2011; 3,684 in 2010 and 8,877 in 2009 for a grand total of 60,178 since I went digital. Part of the increase is due to exposure bracketing for images that may need it. Totals are not easy to find before 2009, except in some years when I made no photographs. By comparison, my father in his 60 +/- years actively photographing full-time, made an estimated 50,000 large format film photographs, approximately 80,000 medium format images and another 20,000 tests or family snapshots with 35 mm film. While Dad would make at most 10-16 images a day in a subject rich area with the expenses and limitations of large format, I sometimes make as many as one or two hundred images on a big day. I am highly selective at times, but I also like to work the angles. I’m not usually shooting away hoping to get a few good pictures by sheer odds, an approach my father poked fun at, the majority of my photographs are potentially saleable. That is what I plan to focus on doing more of with my own work in the next several years. I already sell as many of my own prints as Dad’s, but his darkroom vintage gelatin silver prints, Cibachrome and dye transfer color prints blow my little ol’ chromogenic or digital prints away in dollar volume.

Please help me improve by sharing in comments which two or so you like best and two or so that you like least…

1. Sunrise Sierra Wave Cloud Over Lone Pine, Sierra East Side, California. I drove six hours to Lone Pine arriving at 2 a.m., but awakened energized only four hours later, looked out and saw the entire sky was blazing red with a huge Sierra Wave Cloud directly overhead. I immediately drove East toward Death Valley enough to include Mt. Whitney, the mountains and the Sierra Wave Cloud in one frame.

2. Clearing Sunset Near Vista Encontada, North Rim, Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. I exceeded the national park speed limit to get to this unnamed stop after photographing Point Imperial with the sun still above the horizon. I set up my camera and tripod as quickly as possible as the light was fading to dark fast. The howling strong wind required me to make a number of exposures before I got a sharp one.

3. Secret Cove, Ponderosa Pines, Lake Tahoe, Tahoe National Forest, California. This place is hard to find and a significant hike, more than two miles, from the highway. The interesting rock arrangements and opportunity to capture near, middle and far away scenic elements, kept me photographing here nearly all day.

4. Sun Rays Through Cloud Layers, Pacific Ocean, Cardiff-By-The-Sea, California. A friend of mine and his daughter and I were photographing her cousins and brothers surfing, when the sun, clouds and sunlight began to put on this epic show, while it was also getting dark fast. I had been using shutter priority to keep the surfers sharp, but shifted into manual, lower ISO, smaller aperture settings for a series of landscape photographs. That’s when the daughter started asking me about what tripods do for photographs…

5. Twilight, Mist Patterns, Round Valley Lake, Greenville, California. This photograph I made near dark and lightened it some in Photoshop. Images made around the dusk hour often exhibit shades of translucent blue like this.

6. Clay Rainbow Near Old Pahreah, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah. No trip to the wilderness Southwest is complete without getting stuck in the sand and mud. I had to get stuck and unstuck by myself many miles from pavement to earn this photograph. Besides that, making the image was straightforward with just a little saturation added for spice, though I actually de-saturated the red after curves contrast made it a bit overdone.

7. Logs And Reflections, Manzanita Lake, Lassen Volcanic National Park, California. This photo was among many I found walking around Manzanita Lake during the evening sun angle when the lake surface appeared to catch fire and glow with the most intensity.

8. Lower Spooky Gulch Slot Canyon, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah. I wanted to get into Coyote Gulch, but did not want to backpack overnight. This slot canyon and two others near it, including the Dry Fork of Coyote Gulch, provided plenty of interesting sandstone canyon sculpture without fighting the crowds at Antelope Canyon or The Wave in Arizona.

9. Dawn Mist And Canoe On Millpond, Graeagle, California. Woke up in the dark to make this image. The mist accumulating on the surface of the Millpond peaked just as I began to see and decreased with the progression of daybreak. I made a few exposures when it was darker with more mist, but the mist patterns in this were more interesting, while less lightening is needed on this image.

10. Old Mission, San Juan Capistrano, California. I made this one, as I do many photographs, from the tripod platform my father built on the roof of our family Ford 150 Econoline travel van. You cannot see over the mission wall from street level.

11. Bicyclists Rejoice, Murals, Balmy Alley, Mission District, San Francisco, California. I agree with Nina Simone that an artist’s responsibility is to reflect the times. I show the general mood and place where the murals are, without recording any of them specifically, but rather, transforming their combination into a telltale scene. I intend to draw attention to the neighborhood and encourage people to go see this incredible, often political art. I clicked one frame before the bicyclists came happily along and idealized the composition. Riding bicycles will become more and more a sign of the times in the future.

12. Farm Workers, Strawberry Fields Near Oceano and Guadalupe, California. I stumbled upon this field of workers and others picking strawberries and cabbages on the way to the Oceano Dunes. Some sections of the dunes are called the Nipomo Dunes and Pismo Dunes in each respective town the dunes reach across. By seeking out the wildest part of the Oceano Dunes, I also discovered several other subjects I had been thinking of photographing for some time. The vantage point of the top of my van came in handy again here.

13. Broken Windows Detail, Abandoned School, Mare Island, California. More signs of the times. Watch your step in ruined buildings. Watch out above too. I have been dive bombed by birds, charged at by ferrel cats and made to jump by mice and rats. I notice abandoned buildings and homes all over the West, in cities and in rural areas. I made this image from the public roadway, as the condemned school was on property owned by a private corporation who bought it from the US Navy. The school was on part of the defunct Mare Island Naval Base. To see the photograph large

http://www.philiphyde.com/#mi=2&pt=1&pi=10000&s=3&p=27&a=0&at=0

14. Freeway Curves, Vallejo, California. I like the curves and shapes found in many of the giant concrete bridges, ramps, columns, buttresses and beams of our interstate highway system. Photographing freeways is dangerous and sometimes tough on the lungs in rush hour. Often high contrast separates the shadowy under sides of roadways from bright surroundings, yet shadows add curves and other interest.

15. Oakland Harbor From Yerba Buena Island, San Francisco Bay, California. This side of Yerba Buena Island is a challenging place to make photographs as there is no place to park and the construction crews for the new Bay Bridge want to keep people away from the construction zone. However, I managed to squeeze out a few images of Oakland across the Bay receding into the mist.

16. California Highway One From Above, Big Sur Coast, Pacific Ocean, Los Padres National Forest, California. The color version of this is beautiful with a sapphire blue ocean and gold illuminated plants on the cliffs, but I feel the black and white version somehow transports us to another time with the help of winding two-lane State Highway 1. Climbing several hundred feet above the highway also gives this a unique perspective. I had to watch out for Poison Oak, which is prolific in Big Sur. In the end I was not careful enough and drove home with the rash on my face, forearm, ankle and calf.

17. San Juan River Canyons From Muley Point Overlook, Utah. Muley Point was one of Dad’s favorite photo stops. The dirt road and remote location weeds out many travelers. However, the views are great of Monument Valley and into the San Juan River canyons, offering all kinds of photographic possibilities.

18. Leaning Alders Abstract, Indian Creek Near Taylorsville, California. I made a number of variations on this, a few closer in, some including the shore, a few horizontals. This version stands out the most. The color version of this same composition looks nearly identical to the black and white, except for the large floating stick in the lower right that is brown in the color image. The Alder tree trunks are dark gray either way, as well as the water being the same slate gray in either color or black and white.

19. La Jolla Caves, La Jolla Shores, California. A friend of mine’s kids were doing flips off rocks into the ocean at a place called Deadman’s, to the side and above La Jolla Caves. I photographed the boys doing flips and a couple flops. I photographed the cormorants on the cliffs as well as the beautiful and a bit spooky cave entrances at the cliff base.

20. Burney Falls, McArthur-Burney Falls Memorial State Park, California. I have wanted to visit Burney Falls for a long time to see if I could photograph it in a different way from the many my father did. He photographed it in all seasons, but his most known image of the falls he made in winter with the foreground deciduous trees bare and few leaves on any other shrubs. I was happy to find that there are many viewing areas and many angles from which to photograph the waterfall, including from downstream, from front, side and from several different levels above the 129-foot drop.

21. Spring Showers, Table Mountain, Sierra Foothills Near Oroville, California. Many of my best images I drive right by and then turn around to go back and make the exposure. This photograph was located on a part of the highway with narrow shoulders and steep drop offs on either side of the road. The nearest place to park was more than half-mile down the road. I felt this one was worth hiking a mile round-trip, but I also had to watch for some time, the sun going in and out of the clouds to pick the best moment when the trees would be lit, but also when they cast at least some shadow, which may add interest.

Excerpts From The Text And Photographs of Drylands: The Deserts of North America by Philip Hyde, Part Three

Capitol Reef from Cohab Canyon, Capitol Reef National Park, Utah, 1978, by Philip Hyde. Nationally exhibited and first published in “Drylands: The Deserts of North America” by Philip Hyde. A stronger, more majestic photograph than a similar earlier image published in “Slickrock: The Canyon Country of Southeast Utah” with Edward Abbey.

Drylands: The Deserts of North America with photographs and text by Philip Hyde, developed out of nearly 60 years of exploring and defending western North American wilderness, with special emphasis on the five deserts of the continent. Yolla Bolly Press, which also packaged Mountain Light by Galen Rowell and other foundational landscape photography titles, recently donated its archive to Stanford University, where Drylands and its production can be viewed. Drylands is now out of print, but can be found at various online booksellers including Amazon under Drylands: The Deserts of North America by Philip Hyde.

Passing through vast expanses of land that appear to be nearly bereft of any living thing, I wonder at the sight of a small plant braving the harsh environment. Its difficult circumstances do not evoke sympathy; I wonder that the plant grows in spite of difficulties, that it conserves what little moisture it gets and responds to the slightest moisture by blooming exuberantly.

Still another delight feeds the photographer within: the light. Desert light is crystalline and brilliant, making deep shadows and sparkling highlights. This is at least partly a result of the scarcity of moisture in the air—and, until recently, the scarcity of humans and their activities. When there were fewer people, the light everywhere must have had the clear quality that is still to be seen in some of the more remote quarters of the North American deserts.

As a mountain lover, I especially appreciate a characteristic that our deserts share with most of the country from the Rockies west: the deserts of North America are uncommonly mountainous. The two snowiest mountain chains in the country, the Sierra Nevada and the Cascades border the northernmost deserts on the windward sides. Scattered throughout all of the deserts are a large number of lesser mountain ranges that cast their own rain shadows on the adjacent areas. Some of these lesser ranges are high enough and wet enough to support forests on their upper slopes. Rising high above the parched plains and valleys below, they may be snow capped in winter, like the higher ones to the west. The White Mountains, Toiyabe, Snake, Ruby, and other ranges in Nevada, along with the high plateaus of Utah and Arizona and the Sierra Madre in Mexico, create their own microclimates: islands of plenty surrounded by desert.

Nowhere in the world is there as much diversity of desert weather as there is in western North America. In western Oregon, California, and Nevada precipitation occurs mostly in winter, in summer only rarely. In the eastern and southern parts of the Mexican deserts, summer is the rainy season. Where rainfall records are available for desert locations, they show radical irregularity. Downpours may occur at random intervals and locations, sometimes exceeding the year’s average in a few minutes or hours. In some places droughts can last several years, with no rainfall at all. The North American deserts are second to none for intensity of summer heat, but the dryness of the air makes the heat more bearable. Death Valley can be as hot on a summer day as any place on earth, while at higher elevations a sweater may be necessary when the sun sets and the air cools.

The great diversity of the vast desert landscape of North America suggests natural divisions that coincide with most scientific classifications. But the actual boundaries of these divisions are not so easy to draw within those of the larger desert region. In most cases, one desert shades into another, so boundaries must be somewhat arbitrary and indefinite, as are all attempts by humans to circumscribe nature. As I write this I think of Sir Francis Bacon saying: “Nature is a labyrinth in which the very haste you move with may make you lose your way.”

Continued in the blog post, “Drylands: The Deserts of North America 4.”

“The Sierra should be called, not the Nevada or Snowy Range, but the Range of Light… the most divinely beautiful of all mountain chains I have ever seen.” –John Muir

John Muir wandered and celebrated the Sierra for more than a decade inspiring thousands of artists and lovers of wilderness to “climb the mountains and get their good tidings.” My father, American landscape photographer Philip Hyde, was one artist so inspired. His last book, published in 1992 and titled, “The Range of Light,” featured quotes from John Muir to go with his color, as well as black and white photographs.

When Dad was 16 he first visited the Sierra and labeled his map of Yosemite National Park, “Home.” Twelve years later in 1950 he and my mother moved to the mountains in the Northern Sierra. Another 15 years later a doctor friend helped them give birth to me at home in the wilderness of the Sierra. I grew up in the woods along Indian Creek and have been “haunted by waters” like Norman Maclean ever since. The Sierra could also be called the “range of shimmering water” as it is more abundant in rivers, lakes and streams than any other mountain range.

The house I was born in is situated on an ancient granite rockslide that originated from Grizzly Peak. The peak itself is not visible from our home directly below the mountain. We see Grizzly Ridge, rising precipitously up 4,000 feet to 7,600 feet elevation, from Indian Creek at 3,600 feet elevation just below the house. Nonetheless, this northern end of the Sierra is mild, softly rounded and much lower than the high Sierra of Yosemite, Kings Canyon and the John Muir Trail.

As a child of the mountains, they raised me just as much as my parents. My mother knew I would learn many of life’s most important lessons by wandering around in the woods, fishing and hiking along Indian Creek, Spanish Creek, Greenhorn Creek, Ward Creek, Red Clover Creek, Montgomery Creek, Lights Creek, Hinchman Creek, Peters Creek and many of the other streams of Plumas County and the Feather River region.

These local names are telltale signs of my focus on local photography for the last four years since I forged into digital photography; and for many years before that while carrying a film camera off and on, sometimes going whole decades without a camera too. Here I learned to walk, talk, run, swim, fish, ice skate, drive in the snow, jump off of big rocks into deep waters and all the fun a boy could ask for without any need of television, video games, cell phones or portable computers.

I understand the need, in some cases, for landscape photographers to travel. During his more than 60-year career, Dad traveled an average of 99 days out of every year. Yet even Dad’s travels were almost exclusively regionally limited to the Western United States, primarily in Arizona and Utah canyons and California mountains. Is it necessary that all photographers go to Machu Picchu, the Eiffel Tower, the Great Wall of China, or even Mesa Arch in Canyonlands, Tunnel View in Yosemite Park, or Zabriski Point in Death Valley National Park? Sometimes photographers traveling to Iceland might help save the ice sheet, photographers traveling to far northern British Columbia might save a vast wilderness like the Sacred Headwaters. However, generally, I feel more and more that I am a proponent of photographic bioregionalism. In other words, bloom where you’re planted. Considering that Edward Weston said he could look at his boot and find a great photograph, amazing images are everywhere, if the photographer looks, or rather sees closely enough. There is no need to travel great distances to find beauty. It can be found right in the backyard as locally focused well-known photographers like William Neill, Michael Frye, Gary Crabbe, Richard Wong and Guy Tal prove over and over, day in, day out.

I was born in the Sierra, here is where I live and here is where I photograph. This new portfolio is a collection of a small slice of my personal expression through the lens, very often one single rudimentary lens, a Costco special Nikon 18-55 mm that came in a kit with my Nikon D90, a Nikon 55-200 lens, a camera case, an SD card and camera manual. Sure, some day I hope to break out Dad’s large format Deardorff view cameras and his two medium format Rollei SL66 film cameras to try out some black and white film, but for now, I’ll stick to the easy to use and versatile Nikon D90. I am lucky to have Dad’s nearly indestructible Bogen #3028 tripod with handy pads on the legs for comfortable carrying over the shoulder for long distances or while free rock climbing with one hand down into some canyon in these fair mountains of home.

Nearly all of my photographs are single exposure, single image capture, though now that I’m learning to blend, I usually make at least two, sometimes three exposures of most high contrast photographs. The only photograph in this new Sierra Portfolio that is a blend is #3 “Oaks, Grizzly Ridge, Fall.” It is not a blend for contrast, but for the purpose of lightening the California Black Oaks and shifting color temperature of part of the image and not another. Many of these Sierra Nevada photographs involve very little Photoshop work at all, except where obvious. Color saturation was rarely increased with the saturation slider. I usually only increase saturation as a byproduct of working with the curves to attain the look of the original scene. People who don’t use Photoshop and claim their images are more pure because they for the most part use their RAW file, are generally producing images that are less true to life than those who use Photoshop because the RAW file rarely match any scene the way it looked originally. For more on this and related subjects see also the blog post, “David Leland Hyde’s Portfolio One Revisions And New Releases.” Please keep in mind that I create these photographs in limited editions of only 100. When they’re gone, they’re gone. Enjoy browsing: Sierra Portfolio… and please share which you like best…

Many New Releases Added And Others Revised In My Portfolio On PhilipHyde.com

Besides several images from the blog post, “My 12 ‘Greatest Hits’ Of 2012,” now on display large on PhilipHyde.com, many other newly released DLH images are now on view and a number of previously released photographs are now revised and updated. See the David Leland Hyde Portfolio at the end of 16 Philip Hyde Portfolios on the Philip Hyde Photography website and acquire a fine art archival lightjet chromogenic print out of a limited edition of only 100.

In this blog post, I will share a little about the making of a few of the newly released photographs now in the revised portfolio. In the blog posts, “Northern California Beaches: Misty Sonoma Coast” and “Actor, Photographer, Apple Farmer And 1960s Activist Nicholas King’s Memorial,” I included a few of the landscape photographs from the Sonoma County Pacific Ocean Coast and the Mendocino County Pacific Ocean Coast. Some of these California beaches and rocky cliffs can now be seen in the revised portfolio. One image that did not appear in “My 12 ‘greatest hits’ of 2012,” from my Sonoma and Mendocino Coasts trip, that now appears in my portfolio is “Cypress Trees, Point Arena Odd Fellows Cemetery.” Also, a photograph from 2009 of Utah called, “Mesas, Boulders, San Rafael Swell,” that I posted with my guest blog post on Greg Russell’s Alpenglow Images, “Make Your Own Tripod Tracks,” has itself also been revised and added to the remade portfolio gallery.

On the same trip through Utah in 2009, I also made the vertical, “Sandstone Boulders Against The Sky.” This photograph was one of many I made that morning. I left Boulder, Colorado the evening before and spent the night just past the Green River crossing where Interstate 70 climbs up onto the Colorado Plateau. It was a bitter cold winter night with blowing snow and howling gale force winds. In the morning my Ford Van was caked with frozen snow, ice and road grime. I stopped there to sleep only for a few hours in the middle of the night and woke up just as the light began to dawn on the snowy landscape. The desert lands of Southern Utah came to live with new definition and beauty in the fresh snow. In the early morning my hands, nose and other extremities felt like they would surely get frost bite, but I persisted to photograph all morning. By late morning the snow was beginning to melt off in the surprisingly warm sun, a welcome contrast to the cold of the night before. As the snow melted, intricate and visually fascinating snow patterns were left against the red rock sandstone background. Also, the light softened and became more diffuse as high clouds moved back in. The sandstone boulders appeared in many of my photographs, but this image in particular also captured the sky and the light.

“Dawn, American River From Fair Oaks Bluffs,” I made in 2012 from another Uncle, Clint King’s home the morning of his memorial service. I got up about a half hour before sunrise to be able to catch the sunrise and the mist on the American River. Fair Oaks is a beautiful bedroom suburb town on the outskirts of Sacramento. My Uncle Clint was a self-made man who did very well. I will write a future blog tribute to him as I did for my Uncle Nick King. The tribute will also contain more images of the event and related subjects.

After my Uncle Clint’s memorial celebration in November 2012, I drove to Livermore to see the Golden Decade Legacy Show at Figurehead Gallery that included my father’s vintage and authorized archival prints, Ansel Adams prints, Minor White prints and the black and white photography of other students of theirs from the California School of Fine Arts, now the San Francisco Art Institute. After viewing the exhibition, I attempted to photograph at the Livermore Gravel Pits as Dad did in 1949. However, due to liability, they would only let me photograph on a day where the office foreman could accompany me. I tried to sneak some photos, but an upper level manager drove over and yelled obscenities at me.

I drove from there down to photograph some architecture of the restored old homes in downtown Pleasanton, California. However, still craving more gritty fare, I also stopped under the freeway to photograph graffiti and street art. On the way home through Stockton, I also exited in downtown there, but did not find much I wanted to photograph until I found my way to the Deep Water Port of Stockton. Again, I ran into management that would not allow photographs without contacting the corporate office and coming back another day. One of the homeland security guards told me how to drive around to the other side of the San Joaquin River and photograph the Port of Stockton from a distance. This is how I made the photograph, “Port of Stockton” that also appears in the updated portfolio.

In 2009 in Death Valley National Park, I first came across the phenomena of photographers overrunning an iconic landscape. I descended into Death Valley during the evening magic hour, made some images near Panamint Springs and a few other stops on the way down to Stovepipe Wells and the Mesquite Flats Sand Dunes. I hit the sand running in the Twilight hour. The dunes were heavily beaten with footprints, as I suppose there had not been any windstorms recently. Still, I managed to make a number of good images including some of the classic tallest dune there at Mesquite Flats with some Amargosa Range mountains in the background. I was satisfied, short on time and the campground and all lodging was full. I moved on to the Furnace Creek area and parked for the night in my Van in the hotel parking lot.

Two Horses With Live Oak, “Inveration,” Sierra Foothills Near Dunlap, California, copyright 2009 David Leland Hyde.

The next morning I woke up in the dark and headed out to Zabriski Point. I was amazed to find that even an hour before sunrise, the parking lot already had around 10 vehicles in it. I took the paved road width trail up to Zabriski Point proper and found close to a dozen photographers already set up waiting for the sun to come up. I stopped briefly in the paved stone-encircled corral where more cattle were gathering by the minute to photograph the sunrise cliché.

I walked back toward the parking lot, but saw a small dirt trail taking off for the ridge that angled toward Manly Beacon. I took this trail and the crowd of gathering photographers soon faded into the distance. I followed the dirt trail along the ridge top marveling at the vast open space of the Badlands and how not one photographer could be seen in the entire Death Valley landscape, except in the small confines of one paved trail overlook. I made a few photographs of Manly Beacon, an icon, by any definition, though captured from an angle that only a few take the time to see because it requires a little extra walking. The irony is that the sunrise all those other photographers were waiting for never happened. The sun never came up and never came out. it remained cloudy, as you can see in my photograph. I thought about how my Dad would most probably have hiked way down into the Badlands with his large format view camera, miles from the parking lot, lost amidst the bare earth of the erosion landforms. I remembered being teased in school for being different. At that moment in the Death Valley landscape, all I felt was gratitude for my upbringing. My parents taught me not only to think “outside the box,” but more importantly to live outside the box… and as Robert Frost said, “That has made all the difference.”

On that note I introduce “Two Horses With Live Oak, ‘Inveration,’ Sierra Foothills Near Dunlap, California,” and “Urban Railroad, Ultra Fine, Reno, Nevada.” These two 2009 photographs are what I call Photoshop experimental photography art. “Inveration” is a made up word to describe my Photoshop process for that image.

Please share: what do you think of these experiments and the other images? Do you live outside the box and away from the herd?

Excerpts From The Text And Photographs Of Drylands: The Deserts of North America By Philip Hyde, Part One

Celebrating Landscape Photography Blogger’s 200th Blog Post!

On this special occasion Landscape Photography Blogger presents an excerpt from Drylands: The Deserts of North America, with photographs and text by Philip Hyde. Besides Slickrock with Edward Abbey and a few titles in the Sierra Club Books Exhibit Format Series, Drylands is considered Philip Hyde’s magnum opus, or great work. Yolla Bolly Press, which also packaged Galen Rowell’s Mountain Light, recently donated its archive to Stanford University. Help celebrate Landscape Photography Blogger’s 200th Post by reading a page from the great book that is becoming more rare all the time…

Drylands: The Deserts of North America 1

The Five Deserts of North America

…nature is already in its forms and tendencies, describing its own design. Let us interrogate the great apparition that shines so peacefully around us. –Ralph Waldo Emerson

Webster’s dictionary defines a desert as “an arid region in which the vegetation is especially adapted to scanty rainfall with long intervals of heat and drought…a more or less barren tract incapable of supporting any considerable population without an artificial water supply…Desert rainfall is usually less than ten inches annually.”

This bare bones definition needs expanding. For one thing, barrenness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Ancients regarded the desert as a place to avoid—literally, to desert. The biblical “waste-howling wilderness” is a description of the Middle Eastern desert, a fearful place for most people. But even then it was for some a place for contemplation, a retreat from the cares of daily life. In our times, the desert is commonly a refuge, though we can be grateful that the deserts of North America were avoided by so many early travelers, and thereby protected. More recently, parts of these great deserts have become increasingly attractive to sun-worshipers. It is an irony that the climate, attractive to so many people, is being gradually altered by air pollution generated by population growth and its attendant requirements for industries and automobiles.

Webster’s definition doesn’t explain the aridity of the desert. High mountain chains intercept moisture-laden storms, keeping rainfall from the land in the lee of the mountains. Wind also contributes to desert dryness. A map plotting the course of trade winds in relation to deserts around the globe would show most arid lands to lie in the path of the trades. Though our deserts are not as directly in the path of the trades as some, strong winds persist over most of them for long periods, particularly in the spring.

The North American deserts are unlike most deserts in that they are not confined to the interior of the continent. They reach to the sea on both coasts of the Baja California peninsula and along the west coast of mainland Mexico as well, creating some unusual meetings of desert and water.

The scarcity of rainfall in the desert has one advantage. The surface of the land in well-watered regions is often obscured by dense vegetation. In the desert, land forms are readily apparent, the often beautiful sculpture of their contours revealed. This may be why geologists are drawn to the desert and sometimes inspired to near-poetic descriptions. A classic example can be found in Clarence Dutton’s monumental Tertiary History of the Grand Canyon District, first published in 1882. Here is his description of the Vermillion Cliffs in the Painted Desert:

During the midday hours the cliffs seem to wilt and drop as if retracting their grandeur to hide it from the merciless radiance of the sun whose very effulgence flouts them. Even the colors are ruined. The glaring face of the wall, where the light falls full upon it, wears a scorched, overbaked, discharged look; and where the dense black shadows are thrown—for there are no middle shades—the magical haze of the desert shines forth with a weird, metallic glow which has no color in it. But as the sun declines there comes a revival. The half-tones at length appear, bringing into relief the component masses; the amphitheaters recede into suggestive distances; the salients silently advance toward us; the distorted lines range themselves into true perspective; the deformed curves come back to their proper sweep; the angles grow clean and sharp; and the whole cliff arouses from lethargy and erects itself in grandeur and power as if conscious of its own majesty. Back also come the colors, and as the sun is about to sink they glow with an intense vermilion that seems to be an intrinsic luster emanating from the rocks themselves.

The stone landscape of which Clarence Dutton writes might appear austere and unfriendly to the casual traveler suddenly thrust into it. Many people would not recognize it as a part of their familiar world, but something about the place immediately appealed to me. Perhaps it struck some of the same harmonic notes evoked by the clean expanses of granite in the High Sierra Nevada I had learned to love in my youth. The place spoke to me of the same kind of purity that Ralph Waldo Emerson was alluding to when he wrote of the integrity of natural objects.

I am not able to take up full-time residence in the desert; my roots are too deep in the northern Sierra Nevada where I live now. I can, however, happily spend a season there and feel quite at home. It was not always like that. The ease I feel now is the product of many experiences, not all pleasant, but all valued for what they taught. Nor did the ease come without struggle, but as a result of an effort to understand, to penetrate the discomforts, to clear away the debris of prejudice and preconception that can so distort one’s view of a natural environment. It is not necessary to change the country—or to develop it. As Aldo Leopold put it so well: “Development is a job not of building roads into lovely country, but of building receptivity into the still unlovely human mind.”

As a forest dweller and desert traveler, I am especially aware of the contrasts between an arid landscape and one that is well watered. The creek that flows beneath my window as I write; the groundcover, trees, shrubs, and flowering plants; the seasonal and atmospheric changes I observe here are all expressions of water abundance. In the desert it isn’t just the paucity of water that impresses me. I am delighted to discover water’s surprising, often beautiful presence in hidden places, as for example, the spring in Monument Valley that flows from beneath a high sand dune—or those few, small, spring-fed pools surrounded by the vast, sere, rocky landscape of Death Valley.

I also enjoy the contrast between desert vegetation and that of my home environment. In the southern part of the Baja California peninsula, the array of strange, even unique, plant forms is the result of the plants’ special adaptations to water scarcity…

Jack Loeffler And Edward Abbey Discuss Mysticism While Camped At The Strait Of Hell On The West Coast Of Sonora, Mexico

In his biography of Edward Abbey, Adventures with Ed: A Portrait of Abbey, Jack Loeffler described traveling, friendship and working with Edward Abbey on various environmental campaigns. In one chapter Jack Loeffler told a story about exploring and car camping with the “Thoreau of the West” and his wife Clarke Cartwright Abbey on the west coast of Mainland Old Mexico. “On a dirt road that extended from El Desemboque to Kino Bay,” Jack Loeffler and Edward Abbey made camp.

They dubbed their camp “Osprey Bay” because they could see “no fewer than five inhabited osprey nests…” and during the day they could see osprey aloft nearly all the time. To get to the camp they had traveled several hundred miles from the U. S. border. Their camp was across Estrecho Infiernillo, or the Strait of Hell, from Baja California with Tiburon Island and Shark Island a few miles out in the Sea of Cortez or Gulf of California. Nineteenth century explorers called the narrow passage between Mexico and Baja California the Strait of Hell because during high tide and low tide, in some conditions, treacherous currents and sand bars tended to obstruct navigation and still do today. “There we remained for the better part of two weeks, hiking, floating in the rubber raft, avoiding stingrays, eating, drinking cold beer and warm beer, and even considering thinking about working.”

Edward Abbey made forays for firewood. Jack Loeffler and Edward Abbey dug a fire pit and lined it with large rocks in which they put a giant stuffed Turkey that Clarke Abbey had wrapped frozen before the trip. In the evening after their first Turkey feast when “the sound of the surf lulled them into a collective reverie,” Edward Abbey and Jack Loeffler set out on a walk east toward the mountains a few miles away:

The moon was bright. The air was warm. There was no wind. The conditions were ideal for a nighttime stroll near the Straight of Hell. We spoke very little for the first mile or so. We finally crossed the main north-south road and followed a trail continuing east. We were able to walk abreast and listen to the night sounds.

“Jack.”

“Ed.”

“Do you consider yourself a mystic?”

“Wow, I have to think about that for a minute. Do you?”

“Consider you a mystic? Yes.”

Consider yourself a mystic.”

“I asked you first.”

We stumbled along the trail for a bit.

“Probably no more than you do,” I replied vaguely. “Is there any vestigial Presbyterianism left in you?”

“Oh maybe a remnant or two left over from my childhood… But I was asking if you were a mystic?”

“It’s ironic, when I was in college, I was one of the two professed atheists on the campus. It took me years to realize that my sense of atheism was mostly the result of semantics. I certainly didn’t and don’t believe in an anthropomorphic god in any biblical sense. It seems that somehow I’ve intuited the presence of some principle or urge that the English language, at least, isn’t prepared to define. I suppose any religious feelings I have stem from the way I feel about the Earth and about consciousness. I’ve suspected for a long time that the planet is the living organism and that life is the way the planet perceives. We’re just a step along the way. Humans, I mean. We’re really not all that important when you think about it.

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” said Ed. “But what about a sense of purpose? I wonder if we have any purpose in a higher sense. It seems like you spend years trying to absolve yourself from your childhood biases. If you’re really interested, that is.”

“What about you, Ed? Have you ever had a sense of the mystical?”

“Well, as you know, I’ve always tried to follow the truth no matter where it leads. And intellectually, I’ve tried to come to terms with reality by examining the evidence of my own five good bodily senses that I was born with, using my mind to the best of my ability. But there was a time back in Death Valley where I had what I guess was as close to a mystical experience as I’ve ever had. That was years ago. I was a young man. I’ve never had anything quite like it since. As close as I’ve come is after I’ve been out camping somewhere for at least two weeks. It takes at least that long for me to really get into it and leave all the baggage behind.”

“Can you describe what happened back then?” I asked.

“Well, it’s not something that’s easy to remember intellectually. It was more the way I felt. As I recall, I felt like I wasn’t separated from anything else. I was by myself at the time. It was as if I could almost perceive some fundamental activity taking place all around me. Everything was alive, even the rocks. I was part of it. Not separate from it at all. I wept for joy or something akin to joy that I can’t really describe. It was a long time ago. It’s not something that can be remembered in the normal way, or at least normal for me. The only time I can get close to it is out camping. I don’t get to do that enough. Not nearly enough.”

DAVID LELAND HYDE: We continue with the conclusion of an in-depth interview of one of the leading landscape photographers working today, Gary Crabbe of Enlightened Images. Gary is also the author of an award-winning and highly acclaimed photo blog. In the first part of this series Gary and I talked about how the arts in general are relevant to landscape photography, his famous mentoring by the late landscape master Galen Rowell and the development of your own personal style. In the second part we developed the discussion about personal style, delved into the making of photography books, photo editing and selection and a bit more about Galen Rowell and how he worked. We are talking now about a few of Gary Crabbe’s photography books.

GARY CRABBE: The rest of the Voyageur Press books were in a pre-existing series. With Backroads of the California Coast: Your Guide to Scenic Getaways & Adventures, Voyageur Press put on a huge marketing campaign like they’ve done with other subjects like agriculture, trains, race cars and basketball. If it’s kitsch, they’ve done it. They are a regional publisher so they’ve done books from Colorado to Chicago. They knew I was near San Francisco, so they asked if I wanted to do their San Francisco book and I said sure. They also said, “We’ve got this Back Roads series: Do you want to do Backroads of the California Wine Country: Your Guide to the Wine Country’s Most Scenic Backroad Adventures?” The writer that I had teamed up with on the first book project got together with me on four titles. She would say, “These are the places I’m going to be writing about.” I’d go out and photograph and the publisher would match my photos with her text.

HYDE: About your brand new release, Greetings from California: Legends, Landmarks & Lore of the Golden State: You wrote a blog post not long ago saying that when you told people your book was about history they were not enthused. You concluded that history is boring, but I find people are eating up the history. It may be the way history is presented. On my blog I’m mixing the history of conservation and the history of landscape photography. I find, to my dismay, that the history of conservation causes some yawns on a photo blog, but there aren’t as many dynamic leaders as in the history of photography. I’m finding that when history is presented with an emphasis on the interesting personalities, then people are interested. Although, I know your blog has much more traffic than mine because my traffic spiked significantly when you linked to my blog post, “Did Velvia Film Change Landscape Photography?” So what gave you the impression that history is boring?

GARY CRABBE: My blog post was more specific regarding the people I contacted to get permission or access to photograph. When they heard it was history, it didn’t mean much to them because they were thinking more about business and promotion. From the publisher’s perspective, this was to be part of a new series for which they had already published a few books they sent me like Twin Cities Then and Now (Minnesota) and Philadelphia Then and Now. My book was originally to be called, California: Then & Now comparing historical and modern photographs. That was the premise under which I did all my shooting though I didn’t need to be standing in the same spot as the historical photograph. Then someone did a book about Colorado using his grandfather’s photos. He took his modern photos in the exact same spot. He called it “Colorado: Then & Now.” After I turned in everything to Voyageur Press, they said, “We’re scrapping the series.”

HYDE: My father, pioneer landscape photographer Philip Hyde, had a lot more stories like that than like your other book where everything went smoothly. . .

GARY CRABBE: Yeah, you know it. I was sitting there with this huge knot in my stomach. Then they came back and said, “The publisher liked your work so much that we’re going to try to re-package this book as something a little bit more fun, like a scrapbook.” They still used all the same photographs and text, but instead of making it like the original layout, that even my mom had noticed from the sample copy was dry and stagnant, my book was to be the test guinea pig for repackaging. Three other photographers had their states’ Then & Now projects pulled. Whether their projects get repackaged will depend on how well my book goes over. One of the things you sign on the dotted line is that the publisher has complete and exclusive control over the design, layout and format of the book. When I saw the first layouts, I was blown away. They took this dry, dull and academic look and turned it into something that was exactly what they said: fun. They kept all the history, but they picked out pieces of my text and put in little scrapbook-like post-it notes to highlight the information instead of putting it all into one or two paragraphs of text. In my opinion it worked out perfectly, but I empathize with the three other photographers whose projects got shelved. I hope that my book does well and they can get their projects.

HYDE: Did your images cover the whole state?

GARY CRABBE: For the most part, yes. In fact I was scheduled to go off on my first shoot, down to Edwards Air force Base, when I fell off a cliff several years ago. I hadn’t even taken the first frame before I wound up in the hospital and shut down my business for half a year.

Morning Light And Clouds Over Saltpan At Badwater Basin From Dantes View, Death Valley National Park, California, copyright 2009 by Gary Crabbe.

HYDE: Wow. How did you fall off a cliff? What did you injure?

GARY CRABBE: I was going to meet someone to do a couple days of photography in Death Valley. I had bought a cheese burger, in the town of Ridgecrest, 100 miles away and I pulled off on the side of the road. I think I was going to go off-road somewhere, but I just climbed in the back of my Toyota 4-Runner, laid the back seat down and went to sleep. On trips I have my sleeping bag and I lay down right behind the passenger seat. Behind the driver seat is all my gear, equipment, food containers and my backpack of film. I live like a turtle when I’m the road. I just as often sleep in the back of my truck as in a hotel. Apparently I woke up to answer nature’s call and in the darkness walked off a 40 foot cliff. I didn’t remember the fall at all. I woke up in the middle of the desert floor in the middle of the night. It took minutes for my brain to say uh, uh, where am I? Why am I lying in the dirt, face down in the middle of the night? Where’s my truck? Why am I at the bottom of the cliff? OK, now I know I hurt. I have no idea how long I was unconscious. At some point in the middle of the night I woke up again. I didn’t have my truck keys. The only thing I had was a lighter. I sat there and made myself a little camp fire in the middle of the night, in the desert, by myself. Maybe an hour, two hours later, I said, “Alright, I want to get back to my truck. I know the main road is that way. I know that my truck is up there.” I worked my way down this desert wash and then finally found a place on the hill where I could scramble up. I made it back to my truck and climbed back into my sleeping bag. The next morning I got checked out by the Park Ranger of Death Valley. I had a broken wrist, bruised ribs, a yanked nerve in my back, but I managed to get all the way home to the Bay Area. My wife Connie took me to the hospital that same evening. They put me in a cast, gave me medicine and sent me home. Two days later I was lying on the couch in the fetal position, barely coherent, throwing up. My wife took me back to the hospital and they found out I had a subdural hematoma, which is the same injury that killed the actress Natasha Richardson in just about the same window of time.

HYDE: So you hit your head, is that what that means?

GARY CRABBE: Yeah, bleeding was going on in the brain. One of the guys I have coffee with in the Bay Area is a retired surgeon from the Children’s Hospital in Oakland. When I told him this story he said, “You were lucky that you even woke up. Given your injury it was just as likely that you could have climbed back in your truck and never woke up again.” It is eye opening when someone who is a surgeon says something like that. I wound up spending a week in the hospital, recovering from the trauma and the next 3 months recovering from the physical injury. I couldn’t even hold a camera. As soon as I recovered, I had to start this book project, which was supposed to be done in a year. I had to do it in about four and a half months. It was challenging. It has taken me 18 to 24 months to get my business back up to speed because my business completely shut down.

HYDE: Wow. What does your wife do for a living?

GARY CRABBE: She’s part of the reason why I get to do what I do. She’s a senior business manager at AT&T. She has the full AT&T benefit package.

HYDE: That’s nice, yeah.

GARY CRABBE: I complain about big corporations, but I got to admit. You know… I originally thought she was the type of girl that working in the big corporation in the big city would chew her up and spit her out in no time flat. Instead, she’s now been there 10 years. They were so impressed by her work that they hired her during a hiring freeze. The benefits help make our family. She has been probably one of the biggest support factors I could ever imagine.

HYDE: How many kids do you have Gary?

GARY CRABBE: Two: a nine-year-old daughter named Alyssa and a 12-year-old son, Brandon. Both of them act like teenagers or four year olds, depending…

HYDE: I’m trying to piece the chronology together in my mind. Starting out, you didn’t know much about photography. Most of the time working for Galen Rowell you didn’t want to be a photographer. Was it while you were still working for Galen Rowell that you decided that you did want to be a photographer?

GARY CRABBE: Yeah, I knew nothing and was suddenly thrust into the top level of the industry. Trial by fire. All I had was a one week vacation for my first few years of working there. The first year’s vacation my wife and I went to Crater Lake. Wow. I had just switched to using color film and trying slides, as part of my job.

HYDE: Were you still using the same original camera?

GARY CRABBE: No, once I started working for Galen Rowell I bought my first Nikon 8008 S and some Nikon lenses. As part of my job at Mountain Light, I had to work with Galen in his workshops. Staff would help the students edit their work. We would be there while Galen was doing critiques and we’d be out in the field helping the photographers. It was like osmosis. Photography was coming at me even while I was asleep. One day I was out taking a photo at local Lafayette Reservoir when a guy walked right by me and said, “I’ll buy that.” I hadn’t even taken the photo yet. I had just put the tripod and camera in place. I said, “Do you want to at least look through the lens?” He said, “Why don’t you just call me when you get your film.” I didn’t think he was serious, but I called him when I got the film. He came over to my apartment and bought a 20X24 print. It was my first print sale. I made several hundred bucks and I thought, “Wow, this is pretty cool.” I established with Galen right away that I was completely up front. If something came up involving me doing photography, I always ran it by him first. I did not want to cross the line or create more stress than he already had. One day after I had been working for him for a number of years and been on several trips, as my photography was improving by the nature of being where I was, I don’t recall where he was, maybe the Himalayas, Galapagos Islands or South America. Forbes Magazine called the office and said they needed, “Ugly, trashy images of Yosemite Valley. They’re changing concessionaires and we want to show all the negative impact.” I said, “We don’t really have much of that.” They asked some question about what Yosemite Valley looked like right at that moment. By coincidence I was scheduled to go up with my wife to Yosemite Valley that weekend. So I said, “I’ll let you know on Monday.” They asked, “Can you shoot it for us?” They never even bothered to ask if I was a photographer. “I have to ask Galen.” Galen called the office and somehow he said OK. So I called the woman at Forbes back and said I could do it. I spent three days in Yosemite National Park for Forbes Magazine running around taking pictures of gas stations, garbage cans, lines of people at the hotel, the cafeteria, the messes. It was the first editorial assignment that gave me a chance. As I got further down the road and started making more images that were salable, it started to creep into my mind that I could be a photographer. I liked it, but I wasn’t going to step on Galen’s feet to do it. I could do my own print sales if I found my own clients without doing anything in conflict with Galen. What finally made me take the leap, was my wife getting pregnant. We knew we wanted one of us to stay home with the kid and she had all these major company benefits. If I stayed home maybe I could sell a few photos. I became a photographer by nature of choosing to be a stay at home dad.

GARY CRABBE: Yeah, except I don’t get to spend weeks and months traveling. I do know people that sacrifice their family to follow their photographic passion. That wasn’t going to be part of my consideration. I stayed close to home and fortunately all of the subsequent book projects were in California. I can be anywhere in the state within 8 ½ hours. That’s a day there and a day back.

HYDE: Well, now that you’ve developed a little more success, do you think you’ll go a little further afield, maybe, for future books projects?

GARY CRABBE: My kids are getting older. As of January, they are now old enough to walk home on their own and spend a few hours on their own during the day. That’s freeing me up much more than when someone needed to be there to pick them up.

HYDE: When the stock photography industry imploded, how much did that affect you?

GARY CRABBE: That was about the time of my fall. The changes in stock did have an emotional pull on me, not so much in my business personally, but in the broader sense. I couldn’t believe that photographers themselves were devaluing their work to commodity status. That was the part that I’ll still continue to say was difficult to see. I know the market shifts, you can’t stop the market, supply and demand and all. Digital did make the world much more accessible. It used to be with slide film, you had to get it right. If you were more than ½ a stop off, it was a disaster. I was always a proponent for photographers valuing their own work. Watching people think it was no big deal to sell unlimited commercial use of their images for say 10 bucks. That was the sad part. I still don’t sell my work royalty free. I don’t have a negative reaction to the sales model of royalty free. My main objection is to the rate people charge. If a national company wants to use one of my images royalty free, I want to see at least four figures for that. I want them to pay what I think is an appropriate value.

HYDE: Royalty free means selling the rights to an image forever for any use at a one time fee, right? And it is becoming more and more prevalent, correct?

GARY CRABBE: Yes, correct. Originally royalty free first came on the scene in the mid-90s as a reaction to regular stock photography, which was value based on use. It became price based on file size. You turned your work into a widget. Then suddenly photographers were offering widgets for 1/10th the cost of what the widgets were originally selling for, which became micro stock.

HYDE: Did your income mix change like many other full-time photographers during that time period—that is, the mix between stock photography and fine print sales, what would you say the ratio is and was?

GARY CRABBE: The ratio has remained relatively consistent, maybe around 70/30, 60/40, sometimes 80/20, somewhere in that neighborhood. But in a down economy, I still sell my work as only rights managed, value based on use. I may have fewer sales, but I’m still insisting on what I consider is a fair value for the use of my work. In a down economy, the first budget to go is an arts budget. People will still buy jewelry before they’ll buy something to put on their walls. As the economy ebbs and flows, sales tend to ebb and flow in relation, but in a down economy, prints may relatively dry up for a while and then come back as people think, “Oh I have a little more expendable income.”

HYDE: My business is nearly 100 percent prints and I noticed that I was starting at the wrong time, but it is starting to pick up again.

GARY CRABBE: I will say, since the beginning of the year, I’ve had a considerable number of print sales.

HYDE: Is there anything else that you feel people ought to know about you Gary that maybe they couldn’t read somewhere else?

GARY CRABBE: All I can say is that I chose my company name, Enlightened Images, because I consider myself spiritual, especially in terms of nature and the universe. I have this big interconnected picture of how we as a species on a planet are in the universe.

HYDE: I really like the name. Thank you so much for your time Gary.

GARY CRABBE: My pleasure. David, have yourself a wonderful day and thank you.

When I first started Landscape Photography Blogger, many generous photographers and other visitors commented on the blog posts I wrote, but rarely on the blog posts written by Dad that I republished from magazines, newspapers, travel logs, field notes and Dad’s books. For some time, blog posts by my father, though they enjoyed more traffic, did not receive as many comments. Now that has changed.

One day a young man came by and made a comment on Dad’s front notes I had re-published here from my father’s book Navajo Wildlands: As Long As The Rivers Shall Run in the ground-breaking Sierra Club Books Exhibit Format Series. The series of three blog posts named after Dad’s piece starting with, “Toward A Sense Of Place 1” is especially poignant and illustrative of Dad’s philosophy with which I was lucky enough to grow up. The young man, Greg Russell, also made a comment on my “About The Blog Author” page. His comments were insightful and showed that he himself had a strong conviction about wilderness and a profound connection to the land. I was impressed and I went to Greg Russell’s blog, Alpenglow Images, to take a look at his photographs. His images were beautiful, many of them perhaps a bit too much so in that they looked to me to be similar to a lot of other work I had seen. He had a slightly different twist on “Mesa Arch” in Canyonlands and on the sand dunes in Death Valley, some waterfalls, some sunsets. Regardless, he and I struck up an online friendship based on his excellent comments that make a consistent contribution on this blog.

Photography can in some ways be rife with elitism. Some photographers are the most generous and helpful people you will ever meet. Some are arrogant, cliquish and exclusionary to outsiders. One time I heard the story of an aspiring landscape photographer having a friendly talk with another landscape photographer. The veteran photographer, who claimed to be well-known (I’ve never heard of him) as soon as he found out the newbie made his living from another source other than photography, practically ended the conversation in mid-sentence. This same photographer had gone on and on about how he had first made the plunge into being a full-time photographer. Eventually the listener to these great tales of heroism asked, “Well, how did you do it? What did you actually do to bring in the bacon while you were getting started?” It turns out the arrogant photographer confided that his wife had a rather large trust fund. This is the classic story. Many, many people, more and more all the time, buy their way into being full-time in photography, rather than beginning part-time and working on a shoestring. Yet those who already have their place successfully bought and paid for, have the audacity to look down on those who are still learning. Wait a minute, I thought that was everybody? I guess not. Some people know it all already.

Greg Russell started part-time and built up his photography the old-fashioned way. It started as a hobby and progressed to what his wife Stephanie now calls, “A serious addiction.” Should we all hold hands and look down on Greg Russell because he is part-time? It would be a grave error to do so. Out of all photography blogs I have yet seen, he is the one whose work has most improved over the year that I have observed his photography. His voice and vision are starting to shine and he has a strong one of each, I assure you.

In case you may imagine that his only talent is photography, he also has a family: his wife and a boy of three so far. Besides making photographs, helping with the kid, blogging and processing photographs, he also is completely inundated each evening with tests and papers to grade, lectures to plan, and papers he is working to get published. Greg Russell in his other life has a Ph.D. in Biology with an emphasis in Animal Physiology. He teaches at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, Orange County, California. He lives in Riverside. If you know the area, you know that is a bear of a commute too. He also happens to be the director of the Plastination Lab on campus. “Plasti-what?” You say. Plastination is the process of preserving animal creatures or part of them in plastic for further study, research and teaching. He plastinated a group of brains, no joke, for the Arizona Science Center in Phoenix. For that display his lab embalmed, dehydrated in acetone and permeated with polymer, a fancy way of saying they petrified the stuff with plastic, a brain from a monkey, a rat, a sheep, a cat and a rattlesnake, whose brain is only the size of a fingernail. So when they say that rattlesnakes don’t bite lawyers out of professional courtesy, it truly is an insulting joke. I guess there is no joke for full-time photographers who look down on part-time photographers. Maybe their brains have already been through Greg’s lab. Greg Russell, Ph.D. and his lab also not long ago plastinated a five foot long Humboldt Squid, one of only a few others in the world.

Go see his photographs. You will not regret it. His blog is loaded with well-thought-out and well-written posts about photography of well, er, um Alpenglow, one other subject I need to clear the air about. I will leave you with a comment I made on Greg Russell’s blog post, “Two Saints.”

These are both beautiful photographs. I like the subtle pinks, blues and purples. I had an interesting conversation the other day with Gary Crabbe about photographer influences, “magic hour” and alpenglow. As you may know, he started as a photographer working for Galen Rowell. Anyway, I wrote a comment that I thought might offend him. I said that I thought his sunset images were more profitable than of high quality like his other photographs. He is a very nice guy and a long-time professional photographer. Apparently he was not offended at all. He did make an excellent point in defense of photographs of Sierra and other mountain alpenglow with just the tips lit up, reminiscent of Galen Rowell’s work. He said that many people became photographers because of Sierra sunsets and sunrises. He also said that while they had been done before, many photographs of high mountain lakes with peaks reflected cause him to feel nostalgic about some of the best memories in his life of being in the high Sierra. How could I disagree either with the logic or with the argument put across with such a winning charm and kind voice? I couldn’t and I can’t because some of my best memories of my life are of mountain sunsets and sunrises when I think about it. So you keep on doing your mountain alpenglow. I no longer consider myself a detractor, especially since I see in much of your later imagery a solid attempt and success at capturing something a bit different and unique. Try to keep doing that too. Best wishes my friend.

Keep your ears tuned and eyes peeled for Greg Russell’s new blog posts. He will probably tell you more about why he called it Alpenglow Images himself. To get you started on Greg’s philosophy, read about his interesting process of how he re-designed his artists statement in his post, “(Re) Alignment,” or read his artists statement itself. For a more complete idea on his approach to photographing wilderness, see his blog post right here on Landscape Photography Blogger, “Moving Past The Repertoire.” Any of his material will drive you on in your own quest for affinity with nature and for the quintessential landscape photograph. Happy trails.

People have asked me to give a little tasty taste of what I photograph, ponder and write about while I’m on the road on the way to a Philip Hyde exhibition opening, or while I’m lugging around framed prints.

I did write something called “The Santa Monica Experience,” that I sent as an e-mail to my list of friends of Philip Hyde Photography on November 7, 2009. I wrote it at a friend’s beautiful house, not even close to the largest in the neighborhood, but way above my status. I wrote the e-mail sitting in my friend’s guest suite looking out at the swimming pool, lawns, orange trees, lemon trees, and several other fruit trees while the smell of exotic flowers filled the air. I was visiting Pacific Palisades, between Santa Monica and Malibu on the Pacific Coast Highway, in my Dad’s tan 1984 Ford Van, with a dent on the right side and the paint peeling off, parked in the driveway. I had just returned from leaving 30 framed archival fine art digital prints at Santa Monica College for the upcoming exhibition.

…The speed limit is 45 on the Pacific Coast Highway in Santa Monica and I’m doing 60. Mercedes, BMW’s, Porsches blasting past me like I’m standing still. The last mad race of a race madly running like lemmings into the sun… On the radio of the convertible Mustang ahead of me, Madonna scintillating, “You might be my lucky star…” The girl in the white Saab looks at me, like, “You have a lot of nerve to drive that old jalopy van along here and look at me.”

The van is a quiet tan from an era gone by, but not lost at Santa Monica College. They teach cutting edge digital photography and old fashioned darkroom black and white print making. It is the only college in the United States that still teaches Ilfochrome printing. Santa Monica College has millions of dollars in photography equipment. In the new and high tech business building on the second floor there’s this beautiful gallery space with top quality lighting, completely straight white bare walls, where the work of a quiet man who loved nature will hang for an instant in time. And this quiet show starts tonight. It is the “Road Less Traveled…”

Come see…
Tonight is the night.
Santa Monica College.
It will be good for your soul…Love,
David Leland Hyde
Philip Hyde Photography
Fine Art For Earth’s Sake Since 1942

This next time the show will be at Mountain Light Gallery. A different show. Come see. It will be good for your soul…

And, maybe somewhere along the way, in Reno, Carson City, Mono Lake, Mammoth, Bishop, Lone Pine, Alabama Hills, maybe Death Valley National Park, maybe even Yosemite National Park, I will write another experience. There is always plenty to write about and photograph on the road…